GRASSLAND AND FARMLAND—SMITH 359 
(laws if you like), and created a literature in the form of folklore. 
They struggled with external nature, and, like the rest of mankind, 
with human nature. 
These men and women in the smoky cave, the pit house, the skin 
tent, or merely sleeping in the open by fire or without it, were vexed 
by two problems that vex us today—the struggle for possessions and 
the lust for position, preferment, power. 
Howard H. Brinton, a living Quaker writer of distinction, says: 
“Every one has within himself, a potential Hitler as well as a poten- 
tial St. Francis.” 
With these two types in mind we should note that man’s progress 
depends upon two things—first, keeping down his own potential Hit- 
ler, with the aid of education, morality, and religion; and second, 
fighting down his neighbor’s Hitler. Controlling one’s neighbor’s 
Hitler presented a social problem, and for this man probably was 
forced to invent government. 
In the Stone Age, as now, the external Hitler tendency, the bully, 
had to be kept in check. Control doubtless began as family fights 
and grew into clan, tribe, and other forms of group control. Even in 
prehistoric times, government, formal or informal, developed in all 
climes, in all societies, and in well-nigh myriad forms. 
When man lived by collecting, only a few people could live together 
in any one place. Population per square mile was limited by the 
amount of available food. One group could force another group out 
of hunting grounds, but one group had difficulty in governing other 
groups. The political group, if one may use the word, was small. 
Although government may have been invested only in family, clan, 
or tribe, or in a village group, primitive government usually was 
inclusive in the scope of its control over individual freedom. Have 
not the elders of all generations said, “We do it this way”? Anthro- 
pologists are emphatic concerning the conservatism of primitive man. 
That is certainly one reason why the Stone Age lasted so long—long 
enough to achieve its amazing uniformity of tools and economy and its 
world-wide distribution, despite difficulties of travel. 
Many anthropologists believe that this almost static period of human 
history may have existed for 500,000 years since our ancestors first 
began to use tools, and year by year the anthropologists are lengthening 
this period. 
A new era began with the use of domesticated plants and domesti- 
cated animals. When some 97 or 98 percent of the half million years 
of human history had passed, perhaps 10,000 or 15,000 years ago, 
changes began to happen. Men and women, or perhaps we should say 
women and men, began to plant seed and to grow and cultivate crops. 
It is possible that the period of primitive crop growing is much older 
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